Le Mans 2016: half an hour to go

Brad Pitt was elated after being driven around the 8.5-mile Le Mans circuit in an LMP2 prototypeCredit:
AFP/Getty Images

18 June 2016 • 1:44pm

Brian Laban's final countdown before the start of the 84th Le Mans 24 Hours

A few hours before the start it was a promisingly bright, dry day so far, but given preceding meteo performances I probably shouldn’t say so.

Three last-minute stories, two overnight, one on spot. The Big One? Well, burblings of ‘sandbagging’ kept getting louder, so after Friday's ACO rule-maker meetings, every GTE entrant has now been given revised ‘BoP’ Balance of Performance parameters (and at least one probably told to behave themselves). Changes combine juggling maximum boost for turbo cars, plus changes to weight, air restrictor size and fuel capacity.

So a busy morning for the spanners, but everybody seemed to think it was probably for the best. And spectators certainly will, because the GTE race will be much cleaner for it.

The second ‘admin’ story: American Cooper MacNeil (with dodgy pooper and temperature of 142 or something) is too poorly to drive 89 Proton Porsche in GTE Am; but authorities reluctant to let perfectly well qualified stand-by Gunnar Jeanette step into seat. Difficult to see how they’d justify letting team start with two very under-pressure drivers rather than three perfectly good ones, but took a long time for team to negotiate Gunnar in, and for sense to prevail.

And then, 09.00-10.00 main race warm-up at least wasn’t washed out, but was red-flagged early and stayed that way after somebody binned Panis/Barthez (yes, as in former ‘Les Bleus’ net-minder) Ligier LMP2 car and did almost as much damage to barriers as to car.

Finally just had interesting 50-minute ‘Road to Le Mans’ warm-up race for LMP3 and GT3 cars, which wasn’t especially close at the front in the end, but did have lots of door-to-door stuff down field and wasn’t a bad first step for future aspirants to ‘real thing’.

Just saw a video of Brad Pitt being driven round circuit in something like an LMP3 by somebody clearly quick enough to make eyes stand out on stalks behind visor.

Mr Pitt will be dropping starting flag. The place is packed absolutely solid. Go on then, say it again – what price for Le Mans 2016 to be an outright classic?